He sent a car. She had told him not to, and he sent a car anyway, with a brief note that said simply: It's raining. — D.
Jane stood on the pavement outside Bristol Temple Meads station in the rain, looking at the car, and thought about the fundamental impossibility of being annoyed at someone for sending a car in the rain and also found that she was not annoyed at all.
She got in the car.
The restaurant was not in Mayfair, which surprised her. It was in Soho — small, Italian, lit by candles crammed into old wine bottles, with a handwritten menu and a noise level that meant you had to lean in to be heard. The kind of place that had been there for thirty years and had no interest in being discovered.
Dimitri was already there when she arrived. He was in a dark jacket and no tie and he stood when she walked in, which struck her as such an old-fashioned and genuine gesture that she almost laughed.
"You look different," he said.
"Bristol," she said. "My mother made me eat properly for two days." She sat down. "You booked this place? I didn't think this was your kind of restaurant."
"It is," he said simply. "I've been coming here for twelve years. I know the owner." He paused. "It's the kind of place that doesn't care who you are. I find that rare."
Jane looked at him across a small table with a candle between them and thought about a man who had everything and wanted, most of all, not to be defined by it.
"Tell me something I don't know," she said.
He told her. She told him. The food was excellent and the wine was good and they stayed until the restaurant closed around them, the last table, and the owner came over and said in Italian that it was past midnight and Dimitri said, in Italian, that he knew and was sorry, and Jane said, in the twelve words of Italian she'd accumulated over three weeks on the coast, that the food had been wonderful.
The owner beamed. Dimitri looked at her with an expression she'd learned, over six weeks, to read clearly.
"What?" she said.
"Nothing," he said. "I just—" He stopped. Started again. "You learn languages," he said, "the way you do everything. You just — do it. Without waiting to be good at it first."
"That's the only way to do anything," she said.
He looked at her. The restaurant was empty and candlelit and the owner had tactfully retreated to the kitchen.
"Yes," he said quietly. "I'm beginning to think you're right."